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Staring up into Ashton’s face, I shook him off. “Can’t, I’m going out tonight with my boss.”
Immediately, a storm brewed within Ashton’s features. The way his expression darkened with each passing second had me worried. Pissed off was an inadequate description of the waves of rage beginning to roll off him.
“Have a good night, husband.”
I left him standing there with his mother and didn’t spare another glance his way. I wanted to be anywhere but in this mansion with my asshole of a husband.
ASHTON
The rose earrings that my sister had worn day in and day out had finally turned up. I’d had a team set up analytics for any chatter at any pawn shop in the whole state of Georgia and surrounding states as well.
I’d finally gotten a hit at nearly seven a.m. and had slipped out in the early parts of the morning with a few guards to retrieve them. The drive had taken me hours away to a small town just over the border in South Carolina. I’d also retrieved the video footage because I needed to know who was on the tape.
The entire drive home, my stomach had been in a not. I wondered what was waiting for me on the camera footage and if would it bring me and my nieces some of the closure I desperately wanted. Solving Abby’s murder and giving my family back a sense of resolution had been weighing heavily on me since the night I got the call that my sister had died.
By the time I’d arrived home, I’d found my mother and wife having what seemed to be a very intense conversation. Halo had stormed off leaving me looking between the two of them.
“Mother, what did you say to her?” I snapped.
Her face remained stone-like. “I merely mentioned that the job she took doesn’t sit well with her status as your wife.”
Sternly, I replied. “Mother, that wasn’t your place.”
My mother let out a long sigh, and I saw her shoulders drop just a bit. She probably didn’t approve of Halo just like my father, but I was done letting anyone be disrespectful to her. Her jaw became tense and her eyes narrowed.
“I want you to apologize.”
“You want me to what?”
Her face shifted again from shock to surprise as her mouth fell slightly open. My mother hadn’t been expecting me to stand up for her.
My voice sounded cold and firm. “Halo is my wife, mother. I won’t tolerate any disrespect from you or father. I want you to apologize to her.”
Her eyes snapped wide. “You forget yourself, Ashton. I won’t be apologizing to some common girl.”
I could see she was gearing up for war with me but by then the girls had trapezed back into the kitchen. Handing over some cash so that they could buy snacks at the movie, I waved goodbye to them. They were none the wiser to the interaction that had taken place between me and my mother. She was heading back to Japan in a day or two and who knew how long it'd be before I saw her again.
Part of me wanted to go and seek out Halo. I hadn’t forgotten how she’d just thrown in my face that she was going out with her boss but the tapes beckoned. I could murder her boss in the next few weeks and no one would be the wiser.
I needed to see what was on the tapes now.
Grabbing the tapes from where I’d sat them by the front door and Abby’s recovered earrings, I made my way to my study. Sitting down in the desk chair, I opened my laptop and for a moment I was stopped in my tracks.
Unbeknownst to Halo, I had a camera in her room. A tiny little whale that sat on the bookshelf in her room that was nautical-themed had never given her any indication that she was being watched.
She was standing in front of her mirror trying on outfits and becoming frustrated with her hair.
My pulse began to race as I watched her pull off her clothing, her bare body coming into view. This woman could make me harder than a brick at any given moment. Tiny pieces of guilt wormed their way under the recesses of my mind.
Halo was a good person.
Spying on her should have been the last thing I was doing but for those weeks that I was away, I felt extra secure in leaving her with the girls.
Halo finally settled on a simple white blouse and jeans before she left out of the room. I exited out of the camera feed of her room and put the security footage on, promising myself that I would remove the spy cam in the morning.
I found myself hitting play and then pause for the next fifteen minutes trying to pinpoint the person who had come in and sold these earrings.
The footage seemed to go on and on forever, with me scanning each frame. Under my scrutinizing eye, I would analyze every single moment. The process became tedious but I was determined to get answers.
